


let's hear it for captain america

by sidnihoudini



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18729919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: He’s lost and found Bucky so many times that watching him plunge into the blue-icy Danube River almost feels like a prologue.





	let's hear it for captain america

**Author's Note:**

> me @ the russos: put your location on, I wanna fight.

Quantum travel doesn’t feel like much of anything at all.

Steve has put this body through a lot over the years. Pneumonia. Now that didn’t feel good. Fever, fatigue, sweating, the chills. Memories of a wet rag on his sticky skin. Fist fights. One of Steve’s tried-and-true guilty pleasures. The adrenaline that would make his little body strong for two, three, four minutes; the rush of knocking someone in the jaw, and the pain that would follow getting thrown back to the ground. The serum. A hot, blistering sensation; the stretch of bone, the sudden burn of muscles under his skin.

Travelling back in time doesn’t feel like any of that. The pneumonia, the fights, the serum - that was what moving forward felt like. It was painful, sometimes, but that’s what made it worth it.

When Steve puts on the Pym suit and briefly turns his body back to atoms, it’s methodical. It doesn’t feel like living at all.

*

_1970_

He materializes a few blocks away from Camp Lehigh.

They’ve planned this for weeks: the moments in time, the GPS coordinates, the things Steve has to do, and the things Steve promised everyone he wouldn’t do.

He tries to blend in as much as possible. Carrying around Thor’s hammer isn’t subtle, but the Pym suit would have stuck out like a sore thumb. With Carol’s help, Bruce was able to install some kind of Kree veil technology that Steve can control with a little dial. He thumbs it as he walks, and the grey and white Quantum suit flickers into a pair of brown slacks and a white button-down.

Maybe a different Steve Rogers found a better way to sink the plane. Maybe he got to Bucky before he fell. Maybe that Steve got to celebrate the end of the war, and maybe he even had an office right here, in this building, with his name etched into the glass like Peg.

But not this Steve.

He keeps his gaze trained ahead as he moves through Shield headquarters. FRIDAY was able to pull an approximate location record of where Tony snagged the stone when they were first here, and that’s going to have to do. Steve’s plan is to drop it and leave.

And he gets all the way to Zola’s lab before that plan changes.

“How did you know?” he asks.

Peggy leans against the short edge of Zola’s desk, arms loosely crossed over her chest.

“We may not be in the future yet, darling, but we do have _some_ tech.” She smirks and holds out a manilla folder for Steve to take. He sets the hammer down. “Howard is quite angry you figured out time travel before he did.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. He takes the folder, and looks up at her cautiously, eyebrows knotted tight. “You knew I was coming?”

“Yes, but only because you’d already been,” she says, resting her hands on her hips as Steve flips the folder open. He doesn’t understand what he’s looking at, but they look like earthquake seismograph readings. “After you took off with Pym’s particles, he turned into a bit of a monster.”

Even though Steve can’t make sense of the waves etched into the old-fashioned computer paper, he looks at each one.

“He was suddenly inspired to learn how we could track movement coming through the quantum realm,” Peggy explains, coming to stand next to him. She points at a little blip on the paper, a jaggedy spike that looks like an arrowhead. “That’s you.”

Steve catches the number sequence at the top of the reading: the date he and Tony travelled together.

“If I told you what this was about, you’d never believe me,” he says seriously, catching her eye. She arches her eyebrow and nods back down to the folder. Steve flips the page to the next reading. This one has been printed out recently; the paper is still warm. “This is from today.”

“Indeed.” She knots her eyebrows together and leans in, teasing. “Only Steve Rogers tumbling out of space and time could have me running for the printer in high heels.”

Smiling, Steve catches her eye again and then shakes his head. He flips back to the first page, the day he watched her through the blinds. “You know, I was going to say something to you then, but I thought better of it.”

“Steve,” she laughs, breaking character. “You’re not nearly as sneaky as you think you are.”

Steve’s eyebrows fly up into his hairline. “You saw me?”

“It was hard to miss you.” She’s still smiling at him, that little twisted thing that used to mean the joke was on him. It still makes his stomach flip; she’ll always make his stomach flip. The butterflies will always be there when it comes to her. She lowers her voice and winks, “I liked the hat.”

He can’t help laughing at that. He groans and rubs a hand over his face.

“Just trying to blend in,” he manages, bright red.

When Steve looks up from the folder, Peggy is watching him. Her smile has faded. Her eyes are warm and familiar. They hold each other’s gaze; no more jokes, no teasing back-and-forth. It’s just the two of them now. Peggy and Steve Rogers, the war time kids who never got it right. And Steve knows he should be going. He knows he has work to do. But five seconds won’t feel very long at all.

“I’m going to regret it if I don’t ask at least once, Peg,” he croaks out.

That smile comes back to her face; those dimples, the new, subtle creases at the edges of her mouth. This is a Peggy that has gone on without him, and he’s proud.

“Come on then.” Her voice is soft as she gestures him closer. Steve wobbles over to her, feeling twenty and barefoot and new again. As they step close, she looks up at him from under her eyelashes. “Try not to miss me too much this time, Rogers.”

He laughs breathlessly, and then they pull each other close. It’s less of a dance and more of a swaying hug, but Steve presses his face into her shoulder, nose in her hair, and closes his eyes. Memories and feelings pour through him. The war, the plane crash. How she couldn’t have saved him, because after Bucky fell off that train, he didn’t want her to. He would choose to go into that ice every single time, and Peggy deserved more than that.

“Well then,” she says, and they both pretend not to notice how choked up the other is as they pull away. Peggy smooths her linen shirt down. “Where are you off to now?”

Steve clears his throat and looks over to where he set Thor’s hammer on the desk.

“Asgard,” he says seriously, which makes her laugh.

Peggy raises one of her eyebrows. “And you can lift that?”

To demonstrate, Steve lifts Mjolnir by its handle, and raises his eyebrows back at her. She doesn’t say anything, but there’s a little sparkle in her eye as she catches his. For some reason, she doesn’t look surprised.

Then he can’t put leaving off any longer, so he says, “I need to ask you for a favor while I’m here, Peg.”

“Dancing with a married woman in her place of employment wasn’t enough?” she teases, shooting him a look.

Steve returns it with a flat expression. “You’re funny.”

“Thanks, darling. I do try.” He gets one last quick smile and then she’s all business again, moving around the desk edge like this is her office and not Zola’s. “What can I do?”

He hesitates.

“I have intel,” he starts, carefully. Trying his very best to tread lightly. “But I don’t know if it exists yet.”

Peggy isn’t in yet. She studies him for a moment, obviously trying to get a read on his face. He raises his eyebrows, and puts his best earnest-but-trying expression on. She scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“Steve.” That’s the same voice she used on him when she realized he was about to go behind enemy lines; Steve would recognize that tone anywhere. “Do you really think…”

As she trails off, they catch each other’s gaze again. A lump forms in Steve’s throat.

Memories of the last time he set foot here, in Zola’s lab, prickle at his skin. He remembers being here. He remembers everything. The realization, the explosion, the way Natasha’s body felt under his as he shielded her from the blast. 

A zero sum game.

Her lips turn thin as she presses them together. There might not be anything she can do; it might be too early to even try.

“It’s Bucky.” Steve thought he would be able to say more than that, but his voice cracks, and that lump in his throat gets tighter. It takes him a second to get his feet back under his body; Peggy stares back, eyes round, serious. “If you ever… if you ever see him,” he manages, voice strained. “Even if it seems strange, and it doesn’t make sense… please try and help him.”

The muscles in her cheeks tic in response, jaw clenching. She catches his eye and nods.

“You have my word.” Her voice is soft but confident. Steve nods back. “So. Shall we put that back where it belongs, then?”

He follows the direction she tips her chin in, to where the silver suitcase sits on the floor.

“Yeah.” Steve runs a hand through his hair and moves toward the suitcase. It doesn’t take much time at all. Once he has the case open on Zola’s bench, he wiggles the space stone out of its holding spot, and looks over at Peggy. She’s standing beside him, contemplative and quiet as she watches his hands move. “Once the stone is back and I leave, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

She arches her eyebrow up at him. “That’s good?”

“That’s good,” Steve nods. He rests the glowing stone on his open palm, and they both look at it, drawn in by the reflected light. “Howard may not like it, though.”

Peggy watches as he turns around and opens one of the many plain metal packing containers that run the length of the lab. He can’t help but think about all the things HYDRA have hidden right here, in plain sight. The thought of Bucky’s red ledger possibly sitting in one of these boxes repulses him.

“What do you mean?” Peggy asks from where she stands at his shoulder.

He eases his grip away from where it was beginning to crack the edge of the packing container, and gingerly lowers the stone back into it, instead.

“Restoring the timeline means everything goes back to the way it was.” He’s probably the last person on earth qualified to explain this, but he’ll try his best. “If I understand that correctly, Howard will lose his quantum tracker when the timeline rights itself.”

Peggy snorts under her breath. “I’m sure he’ll survive. And you?”

“I’ll go back to 2023,” he answers without much thought. As he turns around, he can’t help the soft tone his voice takes. “I’m happy there, Peg. Things are good in the future.”

She gives him another one of her best, most radiant smiles, and smacks his arm.

“And we’ll always have the past,” she teases, before they share another warm grin. “So what are you waiting for, Captain?”

Steve picks up Mjolnir with one hand and taps his quantum device with the other.

“Say ‘thanks’ to Pym for me.” He raises his eyebrows. “And watch out for Zola.”

As he begins to dematerialize, Peggy waves at him one last time.

“See you on the other side, darling,” she promises.

*

_2013_

Steve lands hard in a field of something he’s never seen before.

“Thanks Bruce,” he grumbles, begrudgingly climbing back to his feet. He’s covered in thick yellow dust, presumably pollen from the ocean of fresh Asgardian blooms around him.

Sneezing, Steve makes his way through the farmland he got spat out into, and towards the center of Asgard. The directions Thor gave him weren’t the best, but as Steve understands them, he’ll find the palace there. As he walks, he switches from his Pym suit to something he was assured would be appropriate: specifically, scale mail and armour.

Boy, if Buck could see him now. 

“That shade of green does real nice things to your eyes, Steve,” he’d say, and Steve would moor himself on the ledge between flattery and embarrassment, because he still couldn’t manage it when Bucky looked at him like that. 

It takes much less time to return the reality stone. Thor’s hammer is placed on the ground outside his chamber doors. 

Steve sets his quantum device for Vormir, and closes his eyes as he goes. 

*

_2014_

He knows she won’t be there.

But there’s still that little part of him that hopes-

_Where else am I gonna get a view like this?_

She’d be sitting on a jagged rock in her dusty black tac gear, and when Steve finally got there, you’d never think she’d been waiting for anyone at all. She’d look up at him and say something like, “Gee, Rogers. Took you long enough,” and then she’d give him that little Romanoff smile, and he’d pretend to scoff and roll his eyes and sigh, “Yeah, yeah,” as he reached back for his shield.

But not this Steve.

He clears his throat, and looks around.

Vormir doesn’t match Clint’s description. Steve expected barren black rocks and a hazy, suffocating sky. He checks the coordinates on his quantum device again. What surrounds him is a watery paradise; light pink skies that refract light for as far as the eye can see.

Steve looks down at his boots, ankle deep in water. He won’t change out of the Pym suit this time. He doesn’t want to blend in, to belong to the place that took Natasha from them.

“Welcome, Steven,” a disembodied voice says from over his shoulder. “Son of Sarah.”

Startled, Steve turns around quickly. His hand flexes for a shield he didn’t bring.

And then-

“You son of a bitch,” he swears, and without a second thought, swings his fist.

His hand curves right through Red Skull’s face, but Steve can see the acknowledgement in his eyes. He knows who Steve is, but does he remember what he took from him? Steve tosses the stone suitcase to the ground and charges up the nanotech blaster Bruce implanted in the suit. _In case of emergencies,_ he’d warned, holding Steve’s gaze. 

The nanoparticles blast and fire; neon orange and blue specks dance around Red Skull’s cape.

“I am the appointed Keeper of the Soul Stone.” Red Skull moves his hand, and the blast particles follow, curling up into the air and collecting to form the shape of the stone. “I am immortal.”

Steve doesn’t care. He blasts him again anyways.

“You weren’t appointed.” Steve meets his eye fiercely. “You were trapped. This is your punishment.”

This time, the nanoparticles drift up towards the sky. Red Skull counters, “The greatest power is acquired by sacrifice.”

“And you don’t love anyone enough to-” The realization strikes Steve cold.

Red Skull tilts his head. “Everyone has their place in the universe.”

The detached tone in his voice makes Steve grit his teeth. Red Skull’s place in the universe could be Keeper of the Soul Stone. That was fine. But he was still the man who captured Bucky. And now, he was the one who killed Natasha.

And Steve didn’t know if he could walk away from that.

He breathes in slow through his nose, still holding Red Skull’s gaze. He wants to know if Red Skull remembers them. When Bucky became too weak to work at the HYDRA weapons facility, was it Red Skull who sent him to Zola? Natasha jumped second, Clint said. She caught him as he was going over. Did Red Skull see the way she kicked and pulled herself out of Clint’s grip to save him the heartache of letting go?

Steve will return this stone to the timeline, because that’s what’s right.

But he warns the Red Skull, “I will come back for you some day.”

With that, he kneels down and removes the soul stone from the suitcase. As he stands back up, he blinks, and in that split second, his surroundings change. Gone is the light pink sky, the water up to his ankles.

Now, Vormir is desolate. Black and craggy with deep purple skies.

“And so my love has returned,” Red Skull says, and to Steve, it doesn’t sound like a joke.

*

_2014_

Steve has never been introduced to the Star Lord, and this isn’t exactly the way he’d planned on meeting him.

In Morag, everything is wet and covered in slime.

He makes his way through the cave quickly; it’s easy to replace the power stone with Star Lord more interested in his mixtape than his surroundings.

*

_2012_

In New York, reconstruction has begun. 

Steve turns his Pym suit into a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. He knows where he is. Was. If this Steve is at all like he remembers, he spent a good couple days licking his wounds and watching the news.

He can see Stark Tower in the distance, perfectly framed by the finance district.

It doesn’t take Steve very long to walk there. He missed New York, every block of it. After the Accords, he was grateful to find asylum in Wakanda; and some days, he still felt like he owed T’Challa a great personal debt. But as fondly as he looked back on that time, nothing could compare to coming home. Steve was still waiting for the day he and Buck could do that. Maybe after this.

Stark Tower is easy to waltz into. His facial recognition scan gets him in the elevator, at least.

“Sir,” JARVIS greets him.

Steve stands square and doesn’t take his eyes off the door. He nods. “JARVIS.”

“I’m sorry to bother you.” For a robot, he has a unique way of sounding sincere. “But I’ve run a face, body, and gait scan just now, and compiled it against the data we have on file for you in Mr. Stark’s identity recognition bank.”

He expected that. He doesn’t move his gaze. “And?”

“Barring epigenetic aging that could account for five to ten years of cellular changes, my results match the DNA of the Steve Rogers currently in the kitchen on the main floor,” JARVIS explains. Now he sounds apologetic. Good tech, Tony.

Steve clears his throat; the elevator slows, hanging one floor below where he wanted to go.

“JARVIS. If I explain this, you can’t tell Tony.”

There’s a long pause. Thoughtful, for an AI. “I don’t think I can promise that, sir.”

“Well, for both of our sakes, let’s hope you can.” Steve looks up, the same way he always used to in 2012, when he was new and learning and still trying to figure out how technology worked. It seemed foreign and strange then; now, it’s second nature. “I am Steve Rogers, but I’m from the future.”

JARVIS seems to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Understood, sir.”

“In 2023, we take the mind stone from the top floor of this tower.” Steve raises his eyebrows and puts on his best Captain America voice. “Today it’s my job to return it.”

There’s another long pause. JARVIS is running the data.

A second, and then, “May I request another retina scan to confirm, sir?”

Relief floods through Steve’s chest. The last thing he wanted to do today was fight a robot. He nods and then holds his head steady as JARVIS triple-checks his identity. Right after that, the elevator swoops back to life, and deposits Steve on the top floor.

“Thanks, JARVIS,” he says quietly, stepping off.

The penthouse is Tony’s floor. When Steve gets off the elevator, there’s an eerie stillness: much of this side of the tower is still destroyed after the Battle of New York. An entire corner of the room is missing; jagged metal beams and broken glass stick out. Wind whistles through and makes the hair on Steve’s arms stand up on end.

At the other end of the penthouse, Steve hears voices.

Part of him knows he should return the mind stone, turn around, and leave. He even sees the perfect opportunity to do so: a collection of artifacts tagged by SHIELD lay on a plastic drop cloth on the other side of the room. Steve doesn’t have to be the one to hand deliver it to HYDRA; they’ll retrieve it at any cost, just like Red Skull had the space stone. All Steve has to do is get it back in the game.

He recognizes his own voice coming from the kitchen. He just doesn’t remember the conversation.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Cap.” That’s Tony. “Sounds pretty on-brand to me.”

Steve moves towards the argument, but tries to stay in the shadows. 

“It wasn’t Loki, Tony.” Steve hears his own voice, ten years ago. “It was me.”

There’s a pause. “Cap.” Pause. “Steve.” Pause. “Captain America.” Now Tony forges ahead, asking, “Can I call you Captain America right now?”

“Tony.”

In the hallway, Steve creeps along the polished wood and precision-cut glass.

“Steve.” He can practically hear the look Tony used to give him in that one word. “I know you’re still all dazzled and googly-eyed at how cool everything is in the future, and it is, and I’m living for this new Cap in the New Age thing you have going on.” Steve presses back a smile; he misses the way Tony used to go on and on. “Can’t wait to see your face when you discover Netflix. But travelling through time? Not a thing. Loki throwing some slick norse god tricks your way? Really, seriously, a big thing.”

This Steve sounds much more level-headed than he remembers feeling when he found out. He says, “Tony. He told me Bucky is alive.”

“Who exactly is this, and why should I care?” The fridge opens.

Steve positions himself behind a fallen beam. As far as he can tell, they can’t see him.

“Bucky…” From this vantage point, Steve can see the look on his own face. Haunted. Tony still has his back turned, rummaging around in the fridge. “Bucky is my family, Tony. I lost him during the war. He fell off a train, and I couldn’t save him.”

In the hallway, Steve grimaces and closes his eyes. 

It’s still there. The shame, the guilt, the panic and the urge to jump too. The feelings aren’t as fresh as they were when he first came out of the ice, but they’re different now. He’s lost and found Bucky so many times that watching him plunge into the blue-icy Danube River almost feels like a prologue.

“Listen, Cap.” Tony turns around and sets mayo and mustard down on the counter. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. Train death?” He dramatically arches his eyebrows. “Really sounds like it sucks. Wouldn’t want that, ever.” He shakes his head for added effect. “But whoever it was that snatched the scepter from you? Wasn’t telling you the truth. This thing about your friend? Impossible.”

Steve watches the stony, resilient look on his own face. Young and not having it.

“I’m sorry, Tony, but I don’t agree.” He looks back at Tony earnestly. “It was me. He was different, maybe older, but it was me.”

The sandwich Tony is two-handing gets about halfway to his mouth before he aborts.

“Oh my god,” he groans. The sandwich falls back on the plate. “Should I get psych in here? Is this a PTSD thing? I mean, I would know, but I’ve never convinced myself I fought a version of… myself.”

Steve isn’t buying Tony’s show. “If there’s even a once percent chance Bucky is out there, I have to look for him.”

“I’m sorry-” Oh jeez. In the hallway, Steve covers his face with one hand. Now Tony is off, spinning into the abyss. “I’m SORRY, am I going _insane_ here? Are you telling _me_ , Cap, that you’re about to brave the ABSOLUTE WILDERNESS of the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY to look for your _friend_ that fell off a _train_ in 1945? Am I _hearing this right?”_

“Tony, calm down,” he says, looking sour. This Steve had no idea how good of friends he and Tony would become.

Tony gives him the full crazy-eyes. “No! This is insane, Steve.”

“I crashed that plane in the Arctic and came out of the ice 70 years later,” This Steve counters, sounding way more composed than he ever remembers feeling. “What if he did, too?”

There’s a long groan as Tony gives up, and drops his head on the counter.

Steve knows this is how he and Tony used to be, but some days it’s hard to remember how it was when he first came out of the ice. He lived in the Avengers Tower for almost a year before he moved back to Brooklyn by himself; for that year, this was his home. He made friends here. He and Tony butted heads, sure, but this Tony and Steve, they got along.

He takes one last long look at his friend.

*

Steve adds the mind stone to the collection SHIELD has already marked for cataloguing.

On his way back down to the lobby, he asks JARVIS to stop off on a familiar floor.

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS agrees.

The elevator doors open to the floor Tony earmarked for him, that he lived on for that first year back. Then it hits him all at once: his brown leather jacket folded over the back of a kitchen chair, the sci-fi paperback he’d been reading at the time, left in the middle of the table. He tried so hard to carve out this new, unasked for life of his. Steve gazes around the room for longer than he thought he’d need to.

Once he’s had his fill, he moves deeper into the apartment. In his old bedroom, he finds a pencil, and a pad of paper.

ISLAND FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK, he scrawls. WASHINGTON DC.

Steve re-reads the words a hundred times.

He tugs the sheet away from the sticky strip at the top of the pad. There’s no point leaving it near the bed; this Steve rarely slept. Instead, he ducks into the attached bathroom, and slides it into the frame of the mirror over the sink.

Now, Steve has only one place left to go. He turns the bathroom light off and walks back out into the bedroom. He gets halfway back to the door before something catches his eye.

Steve’s belly flips, and he moves over to the framed picture without thinking.

It’s Buck. Of course it’s Buck; it’s the only photo Steve had left, at the time. It had been a part of the box the Smithsonian begrudgingly gave back to him, still tucked into the folds of his wallet that often held not much else. This was taken before Bucky deployed. He’s young and smiling and handsome.

He knows what this Steve is going through. For him this is just a memory; keeping Bucky’s vigil, being the last person in New York to say his name out loud. He remembers what that felt like, and how lonely it was, missing someone that much. He didn’t talk about the loss at all -- until he met Sam.

Steve thumbs the edge of the frame and gently, gingerly places it back on the table.

*

On Bleecker Street, Steve stares up at an ancient looking brick-and-mortar mansion.

 _Let yourself in,_ Bruce told him with a hint of a Hulk smile. _She’ll probably meet you on the roof._

Part of the debrief before Steve left earth included the understanding that, in 2014, Strange wasn’t on the game board yet. Bruce told him to look for someone called The Ancient One, so Steve does; he lets himself through the heavy iron and lead front doors, and then walks up the grand staircase. Now a left, maybe. Nope. Turn around. A right instead. A set of stately marble arches lead him to another staircase, and then a hallway that Steve follows until he finds roof access.

Steve steps out into the daylight, and looks around.

“Steven Rogers,” a calm voice calls from beyond some greenery. “He said you would come.”

He squints against the sun, and then sees her. Golden robes, intricately folded and bright against the grey and brown backdrop of New York City’s skyline. Steve offers her a smile; she looks out of this world.

“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he says apologetically. “It turns out we needed these a little longer than we thought we would.”

When he gets closer, she subtly nods her head. “A journey set in motion mustn’t be stopped.”

“Bruce asked me to send his regards,” is what Steve says to that, because he isn’t great with this mystic arts thing yet.

The corners of her mouth turn up into a warm smile. She seems to know that about him already. “Ah, yes.” She catches Steve’s eye. “It was a pleasure, getting to speak with both the man and the monster.”

Steve smiles a little, too.

“Dr. Banner can be a real charmer,” he agrees. The Ancient One catches his eye again, and Steve feels himself inch back, receding. She doesn’t make him uncomfortable. It’s the opposite, actually -- and with his guard down, he can’t help but feel like she’s reading his mind. He clears his throat, and takes a knee to set the case on the ground. “Turns out you’re the last stop on my list.”

The Ancient One comes to stand at his shoulder.

“Thank you.” Steve quickly glances back; she’s watching him wiggle the stone out of the case. “Strange was right.”

That’s an understatement. He stands up and holds his palm out. “One in 14 million.”

“Ah.” She retrieves the stone delicately, and holds it between her finger and thumb. With her attention now on the stone, Steve relaxes a little. He watches as she brings her free hand up to cradle the antique eye-shaped pendant around her neck. “You know, it wasn’t an exaggeration, to refer to Strange as the best of us.”

Steve nods. She sets the stone back into the center of the eye. It seems to glow even brighter in her presence; Steve watches as she lets the pendant rest against her robes, and then moves her hands in a circular motion. The internal mechanisms on the pendant click, and lock. A cage.

“How do you do it?” he finds himself asking.

She smirks at him, amused. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“The responsibility of knowing so much,” Steve starts. He looks at her carefully, eyebrows knotting. “And understanding when to use that knowledge.” The corners of her mouth crook up at the edges; Steve frowns. “I saw myself today, for the second time. And I had a hard time not getting involved.”

The Ancient One doesn’t hesitate. She points out, “But you did.”

“I…” Steve waffles for a split second. He squints at the horizon. “Yeah. I did.”

He doesn’t see it coming, but when she hits him, he feels it everywhere. His head snaps forward, chin to his chest, and then back, skull to his shoulders; a sudden, instantaneous, car crash. Steve is always better in a fight. But this moment, this plane of time, is no fight.

His heart beat, the adrenaline of such a hit -- 

It all ceases to exist, instantly.

Steve opens his eyes. Below him, on the green copper tile of the Sanctum roof, lays his body. He’s flat out, KO’ed, on his back, lifeless. If it were anyone else down there, Steve would panic. 

“You can’t just-” _go around knocking people out of their bodies like that,_ he goes to say, but then he glances down, and sees himself for the first time.

He’s small.

“When will you figure it out, Steven?” The Ancient One asks. Her voice is much louder, but still on the knife-edge of calm. 

She stands between the feet of his body on the ground.

“So few people on this earth are given the very opportunity you have been afforded,” she begins, stepping around his prone body. Her robe coasts over his lifeless boot. Steve’s thoughts go zinging off in five separate directions; for a second, he thinks she’s referring to the serum. “Very few people on earth come with astral ties to a form other than their own. And fewer still are able to find them in the short time we’ve been afforded here.”

Then she lifts her arm, and the time stone glows a violent, acid green.

“You must understand this, Steven.” The tone of her voice is pointed; she’s trying to stress this to him. Steve watches as she begins to shoot pictures -- projections -- of he and Bucky into the air. “You will always find him. Stop trying to control the universe; it isn’t necessary.”

Steve’s mouth drops open. 100 years suddenly can’t compare to this.

They move like they’re real. He stares at their sepia and gold bodies; the two of them walking side by side, dressed in fifties style slacks and button-downs, both of them an average build. Steve twists around, trying to see more. Another pair in tac gear; Steve is talking into the com on his wrist, and then Bucky, younger than he was when they met again in the Potomac, shoves him and they grin. A frail looking Steve alongside the heaviest Bucky that Steve has ever seen -- including Bucharest. The Winter Soldier and Captain America, with Steve in that first spangly suit Tony put him in. Bucky fighting with shield in hand, forearm locked around the throat of a younger version of himself dressed in black.

“You two aren’t like the rest of us, Steven,” The Ancient One reminds him, from her island in the middle of all of this.

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, the vision zaps -- it’s over -- and he falls hard -- into his body -- instead.

*

_2023_

Steve skids and falls back across the quantum pad gracelessly.

“--and he’s here,” Bruce announces from somewhere behind the control panel.

With a groan, Steve flops over onto his back. The empty stone suitcase follows, banging against the glass panel of the quantum pad as it falls off his hip. His head feels like he’s been running ropes through it.

“Is he okay?” he hears Sam ask from the other direction.

The quantum tunnel whirs as it cools down underneath him.

“Maybe a little discombobulated,” Bruce shrugs.

Steve picks his head up off the floor and squints each eye as he looks around, trying to get his bearings back. Trees, compound. Upstate New York. Right. Then he makes eye contact with Bucky, standing with Sam a few feet away from the pad.

“I’m okay.” Steve shuffles his sprawled legs a little, worried about that look on Buck’s face. He grits his teeth and sits up halfway. “That last one…”

And then he trails off, because he isn’t ready to debrief that.

“Need help?” Bucky asks, approaching the edge of the pad. He’s still weary about time travel, and space, and people from space, and Steve doesn’t blame him one bit. When Steve nods, Bucky comes up the short set of stairs and extends his metal hand. “Up and at ‘em, pal.”

Steve accepts the help, and also the arm and shoulder that wrap around him.

*

That night, he and Buck drive back into the city.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Bucky says out of nowhere.

Both of Steve’s hands tighten around the wheel. His heart thumps. Finding each other a hundred times has its perks, but every loss leaves a sore spot deeper than the last.

“What, and leave you here all by yourself?” Steve keeps his voice steady. It has to be a joke, because he won’t get through losing Bucky again. He glances over at the passenger seat, just the dark, winding country road in front of them. “You know, if you wanna get rid of me, you’re gonna have to try harder than that.”

Bucky snorts. “Oh, believe me, sweetheart. I been trying.”

“Buck, if I didn’t come back today…” Steve gets it, this is their bit, but tonight -- with everything they’ve lost -- it feels critical to set the record straight. “It would have been because I got stuck, or- or lost, or something.” He pauses. “That isn’t a call I’d make with you waiting on the other side.”

He wonders what Bucky was thinking, in those five seconds Steve was gone.

“Yeah, well,” Bucky says. “Let’s just say it was a pleasure to see that stupid ass face of yours come hurtling out of Banner’s tunnel at about a hundred miles an hour.”

Steve grins. “You’re mean to me. I’m gonna go back in time and find some version of you that isn’t so mean.”

“Ain’t gonna happen, pal,” Bucky says confidently, kicking back. “That Bucky Barnes doesn’t exist.”

Even as he’s talking, Bucky’s hand creeps across the gearshift and sneaks onto Steve’s leg.

“I dunno about that.” Steve’s voice is awfully diplomatic sounding. They’re quiet for a minute, just the lights of the city in front of them, and the inky black of the country behind them. “You know how Bruce told me I’d have to go to Bleecker and talk to someone called The Ancient One?”

Bucky’s hand squeezes around his thigh out of habit. He’s staring out the window. “Lady on the roof, sure I remember that.”

“Well, I did. Talk to her.” Steve glances over. “She knocked me out of my body.”

There’s a lot of things Bucky has seen and heard, but that, apparently, tickles him.

“She did what?!” he demands, face crinkling up. “How was this?”

Steve shrugs. “I dunno,” understatement, “but she did it. I was floating over my own body like the ghost in a Christmas movie.”

“What!” Bucky’s astonishment has u-turned right into glee. Steve raises his eyebrows and holds up a ‘what can you do?’ hand. “Damn, I would have put on one of Pym’s suits to see that. Steve Rogers, ghost of Christmas past.”

Boy, if Bucky had been with him, Steve would’ve cried like a baby.

“She knocked me into another dimension,” Steve continues on, making Bucky laugh. “And then she showed me… jeez, it must have been twenty different timelines, all at once.” He won’t ever get that moment out of his head. “Me and you, Buck.”

Bucky gets a little serious. He looks over at Steve, and asks, “That’s what you saw?”

“It was us a thousand different ways,” Steve manages. He doesn’t know how to describe it, and do it justice. “Really put a new spin on ‘til death do us part.’”

Maybe he’ll draw it one day.

“What I’m hearing is, I’m stuck with you for eternity,” Bucky says.

Steve grins. “This goes beyond eternity, pal. This is me and you following each other around the universe.”

“I better make an appointment with this roof lady.” Bucky sighs and pretends to forlornly look out the passenger window. “I want reparations.”

*

They get back into Brooklyn in the dead of the night.

“When I got dusted, it felt like I was gone for a minute, maybe,” Bucky says quietly, as they’re standing in the elevator that takes them to Steve’s apartment. Steve looks over curiously. “Waiting for you today, that was five seconds.” Bucky brings his gaze up to meet Steve’s; Steve nods. “That’s it. That’s all I can do now.”

He knows Bucky was a nervous wreck. He saw it all over his face.

“Deal,” Steve says quietly.

Five seconds it is.

**Author's Note:**

> [Hit me up on tumblr](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com)!
> 
> steve’s time travelling 4 bucky playlist:  
> clarity - zedd ft. foxes  
> one day - sharon von etten  
> genesis - grimes  
> the only living boy in new york - simon & garfunkel  
> hang on me - st. vincent  
> strange powers - the magnetic fields


End file.
